The Seattle social housing initiative that House Our Neighbors worked to get on the February 2023 ballot has officially passed.

The city of Seattle is now required to set up a social housing authority with the mandate to create and maintain social housing in the city.

As described in an earlier post, social housing is publicly owned, mixed income housing that has been used to good effect in cities like Vienna to fill a need for equitable housing across the income spectrum.

It’s still very early days, and the authority has yet to score its initial funding (a second ballot initiative might end up being needed), but this is an undeniable progressive win for housing justice advocates in Seattle, and just the sort of non-reformist reform that we need to solve urgent problems facing the city.